The present invention relates to a process for the production of pseudocumene or durene, and more particularly, to a process for efficiently producing pseudocumene or durene from xylene by the use of specific crystalline silicates as a catalyst.
As is well known, pseudocumene or durene is produced by a method using a Lewis acid catalyst such as AlCl.sub.3 or a method using a liquid acid type catalyst, such as sulfuric acid. In the both methods, however, it is necessary to use anti-corrosion equipment and moreover the selectivity of the desired product is undesirably low. Moreover, the latter method has a disadvantage that the conversion of the starting material is very low. In order to improve such a low conversion, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 43930/74 has proposed a method in which trimethoxy borate is added. In this method, however, either of the conversion and selectivity are not yet sufficiently satisfactory.